Two
In only a few days, however, their whole world started to come apart. What started as an average day - Sarah working alongside Connor on trauma service - was going to turn into something anything but average. Honestly, by the end of the day, they'd start to wonder if things would ever be normal again.
"You got time for lunch today?" Sarah asked him casually as she worked on paperwork at one of the computers in the football.
He had been walking past, but that question got his attention. "Ah - maybe? Definitely have time for dinner, though."
She quickly glanced around them, the lowered her voice and countered, "How about we skip dinner and go straight to dessert?"
"Your place or mine?"
They were sharing a cheeky grin when Maggie called from the other side of the football, "Hey, Hotshot! Pretty Boy! Major trauma incoming - ETA two minutes."
"No rest for the wicked," he quipped with a grin.
Their two minutes, however, were up far too quickly. They ran for Baghdad, where they helped the trauma response team set up for whatever was coming their way. What they saw when the patient rolled in, however, made both of their blood run cold. A giant, bright orange glass chandelier was sticking out of the poor guy's chest. And then Sarah recognised the patient.
Will didn't get a chance to ask the poor guy his name. Sarah had crouched down beside him, looking very closely at the man's face.
"Russell?" she said disbelievingly.
Looking to Sarah, Will asked, "Do you know him?"
"Since I was a kid." Her response was immediate. Russell was now begging Sarah to help him - if they were going to do anything at all, she needed to calm him down. "Hey - Russ, look at me. Take a deep breath, buddy."
Connor had joined them then, standing on the opposite side of the bed. To Sarah, who was white as a sheet, he raised an eyebrow.
"Connor - it's Russell."
He paused for all of two seconds, then they both jumped into action.
"Hey, bud," Connor said in his doctor voice, "can you move your fingers and toes?"
They could barely understand what Russell was saying - it was no wonder, considering how much pain the poor guy must have been in - but they'd confirmed he could.
Connor's next question, however, was answered by the last possible person they'd wanted to see in their workplace. "Where did this happen?"
"At the store."
It was highly emotional, but the two doctors would know that voice anywhere. Both heads immediately shot up, staring at the woman in the doorway. In perfect unison, they said disbelievingly, "Claire?"
She didn't answer them. The repulsed glare, however, said more than she ever could.
In a matter of seconds, they were back to the task at hand, working together seamlessly to try and save Russell's life. As the trauma team continued to work, however, they couldn't help but keep an ear out for Maggie's conversation with Claire out in the hallway.
"I'm sorry, are you family?"
"I'm his employer," Claire was saying tearfully. "Claire Rhodes, from Dolan Rhodes."
Maggie's surprise was obvious. "The department store?"
"Yeah."
"Dr Rhodes, is he - ?"
"Connor and Sarah," Claire said, her tone changing drastically, "they're my brother and sister."
Multiple heads swivelled to stare at the two, who forced themselves to not look up, to just keep working. Though you could have just about heard a pin drop in that room, Sarah found herself reflexively saying, "Step."
Out in the hallway, Claire rolled her eyes. "Sorry, bother and step-sister."
In that second, however, they knew the damage was done. They didn't dare to even stand on the same side of Russell's bed, let alone look at each other. Instead, they continued working to stabilise him until Dr Zanetti, the trauma attending from hell, arrived from upstairs.
While they worked with the firefighters who had accompanied him in to remove the chandelier - and who they couldn't help but notice kept shooting them strange looks - they continued to keep their silence. When Zanetti ordered a femoral line, Sarah (aka Newbie) did it without any questions. And then, Connor acknowledged her again. Knowing full well every ear in that room would be hanging on to his every word, he took a page out of her book and just kept talking.
"Reese, get over here and help me splint the glass to keep it still ... One wrong move on the way and he could have a massive haemorrhage."
By the time he'd finished, the splint was done and he and Zanetti were accompanying the trauma team to rush Russell upstairs. Sarah was left standing in the middle of the room, her ED colleagues staring at her in total disbelief. She squared her shoulders, rolled her gloves off and dumped both them and her plastic protective glasses on the floor, where they joined the debris from the half hour they'd had him in the room.
She looked only at Claire, who had definitely been crying but seemed to be pulling herself together now. There was no pleasantries - she was too pissed off for that. "We need to talk."
"I'd rather not," the woman all but spat back at her.
"Yeah, I don't think you get a choice."
"And why would that be?"
Sarah raised an eyebrow. "You can have it out with Connor, or you can have it out with me."
Claire merely raised an eyebrow.
Sarah shrugged. "Connor it is, then."
She'd walked right past Claire and the dumbfounded charge nurse when Claire was suddenly calling her back. "Hang on - is someone going to tell me what the hell's going on?"
Now halfway to the doors that lead out to the elevators, Sarah turned on her heel to glare at the other woman. "Russell's been taken upstairs for surgery. That's all anyone knows."
And with that, she was gone.
Out in the hallway, she was relieved to find word hand't appeared to spread - at least, no one was openly staring. It was a sad thought, after all, that this may well be her last moment of anonymity. It's not like no one knew about their relationship, after all, but until today it had only really been common knowledge downstairs, among the people they worked alongside every day. But now? Well, there was no pretending this wasn't going to immediately be at the very top of the infamous Gaffney rumour mill.
When the elevator doors finally opened up on the surgical floor, she was almost taken out by the very trauma fellow she'd gone looking for.
"Watch where you're - oh, Sarah. Hey."
His demeanour changed instantly when he realised who he'd just run into. The strong arms holding her up softened slightly, an obvious sign they were familiar.
"Hi," he said again, this time his voice soft.
"Hi," she answered him just as sweetly.
It was two words - a boring greeting - but those words had been meant just for each other.
They were back to professional then, separating from their inadvertent hug and making their way down the corridor, away from the elevator. They both knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to talk about it, the elephant in the room. But now was definitely not the place, nor the time. Instead, she went with something a little more pertinent:
"So what's the plan for Russell?"
He sighed then. "That's the thing," he admitted carefully. "Beyond keeping him sedated and out of pain, right now - we don't have one."
His words slowly sunk in, as though she were hearing them through a very long, dark, sound dampening tunnel. The more she thought about it, the more obvious the truth bomb became. It was undoubtedly the worst injury she'd seen in her (admittedly short) career, after all. He had multiple penetrating wounds, several thick pieces of glass currently just stuck into his chest and abdomen.
Somewhere in the very back of her mind, the cynic in her was questioning what they possibly could do. She had to shut that thought down immediately, though. This was Russell. They're both trauma specialists. There just has to be a way out of this where everyone goes home. Giving up was not an option.
"Where are his scans?"
She was a first-year resident, this was true. But she was also one of the most erudite people Connor Rhodes had ever met, and she had a real knack of thinking outside the box. But most of all, it was the determined glint in her eyes that he ultimately identified with. So without a second thought, he gestured to the upstairs doctor's lounge where he had the x-rays and other scans open on the computer in the corner.
Unfortunately for both of them, however, there was no obvious answer. Which was how Connor found himself back in the ED - Sarah had been paged nearly half an hour ago for another incoming trauma, leaving him staring blankly at the x-rays on the computer screen. That was when he bit the bullet and made his way back to the waiting area, where he knew he would find his sister.
She didn't give him a greeting when she she saw him walking down the hallway. Instead, she stood up. Her body language screamed about just how much she didn't want to be here - the crossed arms closing her off from everyone, the sneer on her face. It really said it all.
"Russell's on his way to CAT scan now so we can figure out what's injured," he said, all-business. "We think that it has something to do with the subclavian artery."
"Really?" Claire questioned him rudely. "That's where you want to start?"
He shook his head. "I'm not doing this right now, Claire."
"Why not? You've never stopped yourself before."
He grabbed her arm then, and pulled her over to the side of the room where prying eyes would find it just that little more difficult to spot them.
"Look," he said strongly, "whatever's going on between me and Sarah has nothing to do with anyone but her and me."
"Bullshit! She's your sister!"
"Step-sister," Connor reiterated. "And they haven't been married in years."
"That's hardly the poi -"
"- That's exactly the point, Claire."
They stared each other down for a long moment before he spoke again.
"This artery that we think is damaged," he said, getting back to the point, "it's the one that supplies blood to the arm. He's going to need an operation. We can't remove the glass until we know what's going on - and before you go all Rhodes on me, leaving it in is what's keeping him from bleeding to death. We're trying to get good imaging so that when we operate, we're not going in blind."
"So get it," she demanded.
He took another deep breath, then looked back at his sister - really looked at her. "... Is this how it's gonna be?"
"What did you expect?" she all but spat at him. "You're here. She's here. No, don't give me that look - it's wrong, Connor."
"So we happened to meet because our parents used to be married. What's -"
"- She was sixteen when you started this, Connor. She was far too young to know any better."
"Now that's not fair," he countered. "Sarah Reese has never been young and dumb. You and I both know that."
Claire raised an eyebrow. "She trusted you - and of course she trusted you, you were her brother. But that doesn't make it right."
Connor was standing now, ready to head for the door. "Their marriage was over - you knew it, I knew it, they knew it. Her mother hadn't been home in months. Then she served him with papers."
"... And left her sixteen-year-old behind. In a house with a live-in boyfriend."
He ran a hand over his face irritatedly. "It wasn't like that."
"Wasn't it?" she spat. "Because I'm pretty sure that's how the police would see it."
At that comment, Connor was gone. The conversation would not have ended well, had he allowed it to continue. But it did highlight one thing very, very clearly - he and Sarah needed to talk. Now.
Just his luck, of course, Sarah was working on a critical patient when he arrived back in the ED. It wasn't the first thing he'd noticed, however - the first thing he felt was no less than twelve pairs of eyes suddenly glued to his every move. He'd let out a long sigh at that, and made a beeline for the doctor's lounge. At least there he'd be able to log into the computer and get a real-time update on Russell's imaging.
He'd barely had time to turn the computer on, however, when - to his utter surprise - Will Halstead appeared in the doorway.
"So," Will said conversationally, "are you going to explain what the hell's going on, or are we to assume the rumours are true?"
"I don't have time for this," he said irritatedly, not looking up from the computer screen.
Will sat down next to him then. The look Connor shot him must have said it all, because his hands were suddenly raised in mock defence.
"Look, man," he said, "it's not my place to judge, but ... Is she really your sister?"
Connor sighed, long and hard. "Halstead, I'm going to say this once and once only - we are not related. Our parents were married once, a long time ago. They're not now."
Will shrugged. "It's kinda weird, but okay. Hey - have the scans come back yet for your friend? Don't give me that look. It's an unusual case, I can't help myself."
And with that sudden change of subject, they were entirely back to normal. They chatted about what they could see - and, more to the point, what they couldn't quite make out clearly. Connor was putting a plan together for yet more imaging when Will surprised him yet again:
"You want my opinion?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Try surgical theatre SNAP."
Will Halstead had - rightly - given him crap about cracking a journal article, but it was revolutionary. He'd abandoned his hope of having a quick, albeit very serious conversation with Sarah, and found himself instead seeking out his sister. Who, to his dismay, was currently grabbing lunch in the cafeteria. With his father.
Of all the people on all the days - why him?
He sighed, then sucked it up. Shoulders squared and head held high, he approached their table in the busy corner of the room. They'd clearly seen him coming, though no friendly greeting was given. Instead, he gave a curt, "Dad," to his father, who shot a sarcastic "Doctor," back at him. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but he didn't dignify that with a response - instead, he focused on speaking directly to Claire. Who clearly hadn't breathed a word of their earlier conversation to their father - he'd well and truly know about that by now if she had.
Unfortunately for Connor, however, his father drew his attention back. "How's our patient doing?"
He briefly acknowledged his father had spoken, however he continued to face his sister and address her, not him, when he said, "Russell's stabilised for now. Uh, I have found something that could help us with the surgery. It's an imaging system called surgical theatre SNAP."
"Okay," Claire said, speaking to him for the first time like a normal human being.
"It's FDA approved, so insurance is gonna cover it, but ... Russell is going to be looking at a lengthy hospital stay afterwards and I just want to make sure -"
"- That somebody covers the co-pay."
It wasn't Claire who had spoken. Again, he resisted glaring, but he did shoot his father a look.
For Claire, however, there was no question. "We will."
"Hang on there, Bernie Sanders," their father said sarcastically. "Now - I love Russell as much as you do, but we have to be responsible to the company. Are you prepared to do this for every one of our employees?"
Both siblings turned on their father then.
"We are talking about Russell here," Connor said strongly. "Come on, he's worked for us since he was fourteen years old! He's family."
Cornelius had clearly seen something behind him. Connor barely had a chance to react before his father was saying, "Yes, well, some of us have a very clear definition of family. Others ..."
He'd paused. Connor didn't have to turn around to know what was coming.
To the woman frozen on the other side of the table behind them, Cornelius said, "Sarah, sweetheart! It's so great to see you. Kids, isn't it just great to see your sister?"